Along the Coast to Oregon

Saturday, 5/12/12, leaving the awe-inspiring California redwoods, we are back on Highway 101.  Along the way to Eureka, the sign for Ferndale calls and Conrad has never been there, so we detour to meander through the tiny town dotted by beautifully maintained Victorian homes with jewel-like stained glass windows, and intricate gingerbread trim painted to coordinate perfectly with multiple exterior colors. Ferndale is also the home to the annual kinetic sculpture race - we'll be back to see that someday!  But now it's on to find our evening campsite.  We end up in a county campground on a lagoon within the huge Humboldt Bay.  Near our site, there's a Swiss-American family reunion with blue and white Swiss flags flying, all the men wearing broad-brimmed straw hats with hatband ribbons fluttering..  On the edge of the lagoon, a bevy of small sailboats and rowing dories are beached at the shoreline.  Sunday morning we are awakened by the sounds of barking seals, reminding us that we are on the Pacific Coast.  It's an overcast day and we're on our way to Oregon.

Crossing the border into Oregon, there is an excellent visitor's center where a friendly volunteer, a retired transplanted Californian, white-bearded and tanned a nutty brown. provides a welcome and tons of free maps and literature.  We discover that those strange rock outcroppings standing in the ocean are called sea stacks and are the remnants of rocky headlands where inclusions of softer rock or fractures, were eroded by wave action until the sea stacks evolved.  We also read about the only Japanese bombing of the United States during World War II by a small sea plane, with folding wings and tail, carrying two 168-pound incendiary bombs and launched from a Japanese submarine along the Oregon coast .  The Oregon forest is so wet from the coastal fog, mist and rain that the bombs couldn't cause a fire, and the attempt was never made again.

Antique BMW Motorcycle with Sidecar

We are on a coastal route with interesting geological formations, grey whales (we don't see any but another tourist captured the tail of a whale with her cell phone camera), and vintage lighthouses.  We stop that night at Coquille River Lighthouse Campground.  A group of about 50 campers are on BMW motorcycles with sidecars - some are antiques, some are recreations, all are pretty cool!

Coquille River Lighthouse

We are getting  better and quicker at setting up and taking down our tiny tent trailer, assembling and cooking  at our diminutive kitchen table, and Conrad connecting to the Internet through his smart phone so he can do his nightly crossword puzzles and check emails.  The next morning we drive out to look at the lighthouse where Conrad spent six weeks living during a long ago summer.  Now it is on to Portland.